The propaganda of lies, the propaganda of spin

This is one of the iconic pictures from the 20th century. Taken on 4 June 1989, it shows a slim-built man with a shopping bag defying tanks from the People's Liberation Army to run over him. The tanks were on their way to crush the protests at Tiananmen Square that had been calling for greater democracy in China [1].

Most of us outside China know the rest of the story. The protests were crushed, thousands killed by gunfire and thousands more have disappeared into "re-education" camps.

Zhao Ziyang, the then-Prime Minister of China was sacked for giving succour to the protesters' demands, and kept under house-arrest for 15 years till his death in 2005 [2].

But in China itself, there has been a news black-out on the Tiananmen demonstrations (with a very sanitised version for the intelligentsia). Today, many younger Chinese have no inkling about those events, while their teachers and parents know all too well how dangerous it is to provide to inquiring young minds, information about those times outside of the approved version. In fact, even the older Chinese outside Beijing might not ever have had the full story themselves. The internet and alternative media had not arrived in China in 1989, and even now when it has, any mention of the events of Tiananmen in 1989 is carefully censored.

A Chinese teenager in Singapore on a scholarship -– there are thousands of them here -– was shocked to discover soon after coming here, the Tiananmen story. He had not heard of it before. It was only after getting access to the internet in Singapore that he could read all about it. Not only was he traumatised by the story, he also felt traumatised by the fact that he had been denied the story in his own country.

* * * * *

 
At the recent IPS post-election forum held on 2 June 2006 [3], dissecting the Singapore general election just concluded, Cherian George made a distinction between the propaganda of lies and the propaganda of spin. Like all governments, "the Singapore government engages in propaganda, though there's is not the propaganda of lies, but that of spin."

In my view, George is mostly right, though one doesn't have to look far to see disturbing possibilities that the propaganda of lies has also been engaged in. For example, Francis Seow has written about his detention without trial under the Internal Security Act in 1988. He spent 72 days in jail under various kinds of abusive tactics. His book, To catch a Tartar: A dissident in Lee Kuan Yew's prison recalls his experience.

The point is, the version of events put out by the Singapore government -– that he was an agent of the US government out to subvert Singapore -- is so different from that in the book, one cannot in any way describe that difference as spin. One side must be lying.

A more recent example of spin was that by Lee Boon Yang, the Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts (MICA). In a recent speech, 

He said that during his campaigning, a friend sent him the podcast created by bloggers mr brown and Mr Miyagi that poked fun at the James Gomez incident. "I enjoyed it too and had a good laugh," said Dr Lee.

Calling it symptomatic of the Internet, he added "I must congratulate mr brown … for his funny and clever work … (but) while podcasts can be very entertaining, it would be dangerous if important decisions such as electing representatives to Parliament were based on which side can make the most funny video or podcast." While he accepted the argument that a free flow of information would allow people to form their own opinion, Dr Lee said it was valid only if the information was reliable and accurate.

-- 'Today' newspaper, 1 June 2006, 'A keen
eye on GE bloggers, but touch gets lighter'

The Straits Times carried verbatim excerpts of the minister's speech. This is the relevant part:

A few of these blogs postings and podcasts became instant classics. An example is the Bak Chor Mee podcast by Mr Brown. I must congratulate Mr Brown who is present today for his clever and funny work. A friend sent it to me in the middle of my contest. I enjoyed it too and had a good laugh. However, my assessment is that this is symptomatic of the nature of the Internet. The root issue which was parodied in the podcast was actually a serious issue of intention and integrity. So, while podcasts can be very entertaining, it would be dangerous if important decisions such as electing representatives to Parliament were based on which side can make the most funny video or podcast.

It is good to have a sense of humour but we must take care not to allow humour or satire to mask the key issues. The bottom line is that a sense of humour is necessary but, more importantly, we must remember that elections and choice of leaders for the country are serious matters. Elections are certainly not laughing matters.

-- Straits Times, 1 June 2006, 'Bak Chor
Mee was a clever and funny work. But....'

For a minister in charge of information, communication and the arts, he is giving a rather poor account of his own grasp of the subject. He doesn't seem to understand that parody is a valid and powerful way of cutting to the bone of any issue. Far from being frivolous, it draws the audience's attention to the crux of the matter, and asks them to consider if the pivotal point is reasonable or unreasonable.

The James Gomez issue, to refresh our memories, was about a Workers' Party election candidate who claimed, at first, that the Elections Department had misplaced a set of forms he had submitted barely days earlier. Those forms would have been important to certify him as a minority-race candidate, necessary if he were to stand in a constituency that required one. In response, the Elections Department pointed out that he had taken the forms away rather than submit them over the counter, and they released videotapes to prove it.

The People's Action Party (PAP) then went on the offensive, accusing Gomez of dishonesty, and of staging the whole affair in order to discredit the Elections Department. By extension, the PAP accused him of impugning the conduct of the elections which, as the ruling party, the PAP was responsible for.

Gomez said that under the weight of many things on his mind, he had forgotten that he took away the forms instead of submitting them. He apologised to the Elections Department for any distress he had caused. Like a pitbull, the PAP would not let go, demanding that he "come clean" over his supposed machiavellian plan.

The Bak Chor Mee podcast -- the makers mr brown and Mr Miyagi (their nicks in the blogosphere) framed it as a "persistently non-political" podcast because the junior MICA minister Balaji Sadasivan had earlier said "persistently political" podcasts were banned -- had a customer order a bowl of noodles from a stall, specifying that there should be no chilli in it. When the hawker handed him the bowl, the customer complained that there were bits of liver in it. The hawker then told the customer he had never specified that there shouldn't be liver, and to prove his point, the hawker replayed a video recording. The customer apologised but the hawker adamantly refused to accept the apology demanding to know why he had claimed that the no-liver specification had been put in when it evidently had not.

As you can see, the narrative details in the James Gomez case and the Bak Chor Mee podcast are different, except that they both hinged on a mistaken claim, the use of video to record the minutest detail and the obstinate refusal to accept an apology.

The effect, therefore, of the podcast was to strip away the extraneous issues in the James Gomez case in order to home in on whether the use of video and refusal to accept apologies were reasonable in similar circumstances. And if it wasn't reasonable in the hawker situation, why should it be reasonable in the Elections Department situation?

By any measure, this is fair and pertinent political comment. It is not, as Lee Boon Yang said, a matter of allowing "humour or satire to mask the key issues." Quite the opposite: the humour and satire unmasked the key issues, for the education of the electorate.

Beyond demonstrating how dense he was towards the subtleties of information, communication and the arts, the minister also tried to define what constituted legitimate political discourse and what did not. This, even as he raised a white flag of retreat.

We also accept that Internet and new media are evolving. In five years' time, with new technologies and services, even more people will be Net-savvy. So our policies must also evolve. We will review our policies on the Internet and new media during the election period bearing in mind the changes taking place, Moving forward, we will consider how to better embrace these changes so that by the next GE, we may be able to adopt a lighter-touch approach during the election period.

-- Straits Times, 1 June 2006, 'Bak Chor Mee
was a clever and funny work. But....'

He signalled that their attempts to control political information through the internet have been discreditted by the internet community. Yet, a few paragraphs above that, he continued to insist,

Some will argue that we should let the people be the judge and form their own opinion by accessing all sorts of information and arguments. This is not without merit. But it is only valid when information available on the Internet is equally reliable and accurate.

-- ibid

Equally reliable and accurate? Equal to what? In this sly statement is an attempt to justify the government's continued regulation, purportedly for the purpose of ensuring an "equally reliable and accurate" internet. They are not going to let ordinary citizens be the judge of that.

* * * * *

 
In the United States, such crude attempts to reserve to the government the power to judge reliability and accuracy, by spinning it as something for the benefit of the electorate, will never be allowed to pass. However, this is not to say that Washington doesn't engage in the propaganda of spin.

You only have to take any day's statements from the George W. Bush administration about Iraq to know the meaning of "a mountain of elephant dung".

But in the absence of powers to control the flow of information, the Bush administration has developed a new art: the propaganda of distraction.

During the last month, there has been soaring bad news from Iraq, especially that of the alleged murder of up to 24 civilians by US Marines in the Iraqi town of Haditha. Afghanistan too may have taken a turn for the worse -– its worst riots in years after a vehicle crash in Kabul on 29 May 2006, a suicide bomber in Kandahar on 4 June 2006.

Bush, on the other hand, has just launched a campaign to pass a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages. His media staff are trying their best to use this issue to squeeze out bad news from Iraq and Afghanistan from media headlines. At the same time, they're hoping to shore up support from their conservative base among voters [4]. Bush's approval rating has fallen to dangerous lows, now around 30%, and many Republican candidates in the November midterm elections are alarmingly exposed to a backlash from voters over the mishandling of the US' military adventures.

So the propaganda of distraction kicks in. Gay and lesbian people are used as punching bags, their rights sacrificed for political expediency.

* * * * *

Nobody knows what has happened to the man with a shopping bag standing before the file of tanks on Chang'an Avenue in Tiananmen Square. He may well be dead.

Government control of information is not just an academic question about where lies "truth". It often has real victims, from the mild, e.g. people whose free speech and equality rights are trampled upon, to the serious, i.e. those who disappear into prisons, or who lose their lives in a crackdown. And then years later, whose sacrifice can't even be consecrated.... because we do not know.

© Yawning Bread 

Footnotes

1. CNN has a short video in its archives. Link. 
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2. A letter from him to the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, dated 1997, has recently surfaced. In it, he protested his detention and asked to be released. Evidently, the letter was ignored. See also the article China: two little ironies. 
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3. See the report in IPS post-election forum, part 2. 
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4. See http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_8791.shtml for a news report.
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Addenda

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